Al-Aqsa Mosque

al-Aqsa Mosque is a mosque located atop Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem in Israel. It was originally a small prayer house erected by the caliph Umar during the Muslim conquest of the Levant, and, in 705, the Umayyad caliph al-Walid finished his father Abd al-Malik's rebuilding and expansion of the mosque. It was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 746 and rebuilt by caliph al-Mansur in 754; most of it was destroyed by another earthquake in 1033, but it was rebuilt by the Fatimid caliph Ali az-Zahir two years later. Following the First Crusade's capture of Jerusalem in 1099, al-Aqsa Mosque was used by the Crusaders as a palace and the Dome of the Rock as a church, but it was restored as a mosque in 1187 after Saladin recaptured the city. It was renovated, repaired, and expanded under future Islamic dynasties, and, even after Israel seized control of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, it was administered by the Jordanian and Palestinian waqf. It is the third holiest site in Islam and is located near the ruins of the Jews' Second Temple, leading to the mosque being a flashpoint for religious conflicts during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.